Women make up half the population but hold a fraction of the power to make decisions that shape everyone’s lives.

Women hold just 27.4 per cent of parliamentary seats globally and 22.4 per cent of national cabinet positions. They comprise only 31 of the world’s 175 chief justices. They’re 5.8 per cent of CEOs at publicly traded companies, despite holding 25.1 per cent of board seats – meaning even when women get in the board room, they’re rarely the ones running the company.

This isn’t a “women’s issue” though – something separate from everyone else’s concerns or something that just affects women. The data show that when women do lead, entire communities benefit.

The 2026 Gender Snapshot report shows that, historically, in countries where women hold more than 20 per cent of parliamentary seats, immunization rates run up to 12 percentage points higher, and more children survive past early childhood than in countries with lower shares in parliament.

This tracks with what women in power tend to prioritize: They raised gender equality as an issue nearly three times as often as men at the UN General Assembly General Debate in 2025. They consistently push harder on care, health, and social protection issues like parental leave, unpaid care work, pension and savings, and workers’ protection and safety.

Rwanda is a case in point: Today, women hold 64 per cent of seats in parliament, and education curricula have been developed in a way that gender equality is embedded across education policies and textbooks. Students across diverse schools demonstrate high awareness of gender equality.

In francophone Africa, students in primary schools led by female principals outperform their peers in schools led by male principals in both math and reading – by the equivalent of at least six extra months of learning.

Representation at the top changes what happens in the classroom, which is exactly where the STEM pipeline either opens up for girls or quietly closes.

Gender gaps in education, including STEM fields, do not disappear later – they just change shape. 

Today, while the world of work is marching towards artificial intelligence-driven innovations, women make up only around 22 per cent of AI professionals globally. When it comes to leading AI jobs, their representation falls to 14 per cent. The people building tomorrow’s AI and tech products are still overwhelmingly one demographic – male and white – with consequences for whose needs and safety get designed into the technology that now affects every part of our lives. Women are also 20 per cent less likely than men to use generative AI tools, based on global studies covering over 140,000 individuals. 

In terms of business and leadership investments more broadly, in 2024, all-women founding teams received just 2.3 per cent of global venture capital, compared to 83.6 per cent for all-male teams. For Black and Latina women founders in the United States, it was 0.1 per cent of venture capital in 2023.

As AI increasingly shapes economies, public services, and everyday life, women’s equal participation in its development, governance, and regulation would be a game-changer in mitigating risks such as algorithmic bias and digital violence against women and girls. It would mean creating technology that works better for all of us.

When women lead, justice systems deliver better. In U.S. cities, electing a woman mayor is linked to a 6 per cent increase in the likelihood of arrests for perpetrators of violence against women, and a 13-point jump in female victims actually reporting crimes.

Globally, women lead successful peace negotiations and rebuild essential services in crisis settings – from Colombia to Democratic Republic of the Congo – even though they remain largely shut out of formal peace processes.

Yet women politicians face outsized risk just for showing up: 76 per cent of women parliamentarians report public intimidation or violence, compared to 68 per cent for men. And the violence they face is distinctly gendered and often sexual.

Boards with more women are more likely to adopt sustainability practices – cutting emissions, energy use, and water waste. That’s good news for the triple bottom line: planet, people, and prosperity. 

But the numbers show how far there is to go. Representation on paper is not the same as power in the room.

Male board members disproportionately hold greater institutional capital, such as prior roles in large companies and established internal networks. These are structural advantages that shape whose voice carries weight in boardroom decisions, regardless of formal representation.

When representation and decision-making power diverge, a gender power gap emerges: In 71.8 per cent of publicly traded companies globally, women hold less decision-making power than their overall representation. That gender power gap becomes more pronounced as company size increases: While 70 per cent of relatively smaller companies exhibit a negative gender power gap, this rises to 82.8 per cent among bigger companies – suggesting that women face even greater barriers within the largest, most powerful firms.

A combination of forces keep it in place.

1. Cost. Running for office can cost over 100 times the national average per-capita income in some countries, pricing out women and lower-income candidates before a vote is ever cast.
2. Eroding institutions, especially gender architecture. One in three government bodies dedicated to gender equality has seen its influence eroded, with nearly a quarter losing budget, in the past two years.
3. Funding cuts. Aid to women’s rights organizations fell 28 per cent recently – and women’s leadership programmes get just 15 per cent of all gender equality focused official development assistance.
4. Discriminatory and unequal laws. Some laws are biased from the start. Where laws to promote women’s rights and equality do exist, they often lack implementation.

Globally, women and girls have just 64 per cent of the legal rights of men. Simply put, this means that in every corner of the world, laws still treat women and men differently. These legal gaps decide who is protected, who is believed, who gets justice, and who enjoys impunity.

The 2026 Gender Snapshot report points to real solutions that could be game changers for closing the leadership gap for women, and in turn, make our economies stronger, communities safer, and our families healthier.

1. Implement real gender quotas, not symbolic ones. When quotas are ambitious and actually implemented, the results speak for themselves. In countries with strong quotas – targeting more than 40 per cent representation of women in politics – women’s representation is 16 percentage points greater in parliaments and 17 points higher in local governments, compared to countries without quotas. 
2. Lower the cost of running for office. Reform political campaign financing, so class and gender don’t decide who competes.
3. Strengthen national gender equality institutions and machineries through strong mandates, adequate staffing, and dedicated, steady resources.
4. Close the legal rights gap with real enforcement, not just laws on paper.
5. Fund women’s organizations directly. They are the closest to the ground – and the most under-resourced.
6. Shift gender norms and stereotypes by transforming narratives around women in the public sphere. Build coalitions and provide opportunities, resources, and services to promote women’s leadership.

The bottom line: The data have already proved that when women lead, entire societies gain momentum – economically, politically, and socially. Closing the leadership gap means giving more women the opportunity to lead, shape decisions, and drive progress for all.